In general, a cervical spine of a human body implies the upper portion of the spine, vertebrae in the cervical region, which is composed of seven vertebrae, and can turn and extend, unlike the lumbar vertebrae and the thoracic vertebrae.
There are cervical disorders, such as whiplash injury, ruptured cervical disk, fracture of cervical spine, cervical spinal canal stenosis, ossification of posterior longitudinal ligament of cervical spine, and spine cord tumor, in which the whiplash injury and ruptured cervical disk are common disorders.
The whiplash injury is accompanied with swelling and aching due to tearing of the neck muscle, the muscle covering the cervical spine, and the ligament, when the muscles and ligament supporting the cervical spine are abnormally tensed or relaxed, the cervical region is excessively extended, buckled, twisted, or longitudinally pressed by external force.
Further, the ruptured cervical disk is a disorder due to disk degeneration and also called cervical disk.
The ruptured cervical disk may occurs due to an external injury or chronic stimulus, or may be degenerated by aging, or may suddenly occurs when bad positions are continuous over a long period of time in everyday life.
It is preferable to cure stiffness or relaxation of the neck muscle, which corresponds to the above case, with physiotherapy apparatuses that apply physical stimulus.
However, the existing physiotherapy apparatuses use a method of simply stimulating and heating the spine with a pressing member that reciprocates along the spine, or low-frequency physiotherapy apparatuses that intermittently apply physical stimulus to a specific portion of the human body, using low frequency, are commonly used.
The former has only a function of simply stimulating the spine, such that it is not suitable for patients with cervical spine disorders, and the latter has difficulty in directly stimulating the cervical spine.
Further, the cervical spine of the human body has a feature of smoothly bending, such that a physiotherapy apparatus considering the feature has been required.
Further, cervical massaging device that press the cervical spine in the neck in the related art massage or tap both sides of the neck by using a type of elliptical circulation or apply stimulus while moving along the cervical spine in the neck; therefore, it is difficult to efficiently relax the stiff muscles around the cervical spine only by simply stimulating specific portions around the neck.
Further, the cervical massaging device of the related art stimulate the portion around the neck without considering the body shape of the users, such that some users may become injured.